This has quickly become an annoyance to me when it comes to Win8. In the below screen shot, you will see two icons I have highlighted which are listed as system folders. I can honestly see the Homegroup being one, but the Charter Cloud Drive Navigator? (It does link to your online account storage through their own GUI). I can easily access this function via the Metro Interface or launching it any way that I want, so don't really want to have this sitting there on the desktop as I have been pretty crazy about wanting to keep a clean desktop.

Does anyone know of a trick to prevent these from sticking to the desktop? I have tried Safe Mode which doesn't let me do anything to delete them. I have a program I run for the homegroup (Registry edit) icon which works until I reboot (ANNOYING) and don't really want to keep having to do that. I would prefer to just have a tweak or something to limit these from appearing. Ironically, the other system folders such as Control Panel and Computer don't show. So this is really odd to me.

Open Computer and right-click on "Homegroup" icon present in Navigation pane and select “Change Home Group Settings”Now click on "Leave the homegroup..." link given at bottom. (it will ask, and you need to confirm it)

From registry editor, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace and rename the CLSIDs for HomeGroup and whatever other icon you have that you want to get rid of. You can Google to find out which CLSIDs correspond to which objects.

HomeGroup would be {B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93}. Dunno the CLSID for that other ****, you can find that out from registry or Google.

It did break the navigator but no problem as I can get to my files through their site (Or restore my backup). I see what you mean by renaming or in my case deleting. But...might have to dumb down for me a bit. I see you are a programmer which I am not. But - What is the SGAO Flag?